Student Centered Approach
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Student-Centered Approach
As you're planning your course, you'll want to reflect on what the student experience is going to be like. As much as possible, we want to put ourselves into our students' shoes as learners. This article by Shannon Riggs in Educause Links to an external site. talks about how to take a student-centered approach to remote teaching, and advises that instructors ask themselves three questions as they prepare for remote teaching. While you may be preparing to teach face-to-face face, we are all preparing for the possibility of remote learning.
How will my students interact with the course content?
- We want our students to be able to access the content itself, so what will that look like, and how can I remove any barriers?
- How will students find the documents and video lectures and podcasts that I want them to access? How can I make it easy on them to find everything they'll need?
- Just as importantly, how will they actually interact with that content?
- What am I doing to make sure that there are specific activities to help student process that content and actually do something with it?
How will my students interact with other students?
- What opportunities can I give my students for peer to peer learning, for group work, for collaboration, and for sharing their thoughts and ideas with one another?
- What are some ways they could do this on their own time (asynchronously) and some ways I would facilitate this in real time (synchronously)?
- How am I going to help my students feel like they are valued members of a class community dedicated to learning and building skills together?
How will students interact with me, the instructor?
- What can I do to communicate with my students and make my expectations clear?
- How can I help my students feel like I'm present and there for them, even when I'm not physically there?
- What are some ways that I can create opportunities for them to hear me and see me (either in real time or through videos they watch on their own)?
- What can I do to make sure my students know that I'll be accommodating and supportive during these challenging times?
As we prepare for remote teaching, we can be very focused on the content of the course, so reflecting on these three questions can help us refocus on our students' experience. Because of the pandemic, we're all hungering for meaningful interactions with one another, so building those into our courses is going to be key.